


Hoping for something that wouldn’t come

by leadingrebel



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: After Neverland, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Back in Storybrooke, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, written before the actual episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 15:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3655368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leadingrebel/pseuds/leadingrebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps when she heard the words Jolly Roger and not here in the same phrase, her heart skipped a beat or two. </p><p>Perhaps when Tink asked her by hers and Ariel’s word to talk to him, her feet moved a little too fast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoping for something that wouldn’t come

The air danced between red locks and caressed the water’s surface ―the water rocking the ships, shoving them against the wood of the gangplanks.

A light laugh left her lips, leaning in him until her forehead touched his shoulder. An arm around his, not wanting to let him go, as if she feared he’d disappeared.

Again.

She didn’t think she could handle losing him again after fought so hard over and over again to find him. She would fight every time, of course. But the second time had been so unexpected, after thinking they could make up for all the lost time, she had needed a couple of days to recover the strength under the fear to go looking for him.

She saw him silhouetted against the light of the early afternoon’s sun, sitting on the edge of one of the gangplanks, looking at the horizon, where the deep blue of the sea touched the bright blue of the sky.

She sighed and asked Eric to wait for her at Granny’s in an hour.

She kissed him and turned around.

“Hook!”

She ran to him, although he didn’t turn to her. She took off her boots and sat next to him, letting the water lick her legs.

Ariel loved skirts ―be able to take off her boots at any moment and feel the water under her feet, against her skin. It made her longing for the sea less painful.

Killian had nothing of that.

He had lost the only thing the allowed him to go wherever he wanted, however he wanted, whenever he wanted. His only personal bond with the thing he loved most in the world.

Ariel thought it must be like be trapped in a labyrinth of obstacles. You have the exits at the reach of your hand but you have not how to go through them.

It must be claustrophobic.

Frustrating.

And he should hate it ―feeling trapped like a  _damn_   _pet bird_ ―, someone who had always sailed the seas in the freest way possible ―with no explanations, no ties.

“Ariel,” he reciprocated “Are you not enjoying the return of your prince?”

“Are you not enjoying the return of your Savior?”

Killian’s laugh was deep, sour. Harsh.

But he didn’t answer.

Ariel sighed again.

“You should tell someone. You should tell someone about it,” she tried. “You’re a part of this now. There shouldn’t be secrets between friends.”

Killian laughed again. With such mockery to the matter, the self-loathing went almost unnoticed.

“You haven’t said anything about your memories of our little adventure and that year everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten.”

“Hook, I’m serious,” she stopped him, his passivity toward the matter raising the anger inside her. “You’re with us. No. You’re with  _them_. David, Snow, Emma, Regina. They trust you."

The look Killian gave her muted her words.

“Well, maybe not Regina, but… you understand what I’m trying to say.”

She played with her skirt’s hem, still amazed by the sensation of the clothes against her skin.

“I just don’t think it’s fair to keep it from them.”

Killian leaned over the edge until he could caress the water with his hand.

(Like a child trying to reach his most loved toy.)

“It wouldn’t be fair to burden them with the  _'secret'_.”

Ariel knew then that she wouldn’t be able to convince him, not matter how hard she tried, not even knowing his secret. She couldn’t tell anyone and she couldn’t get him to tell it to anyone.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Ariel. But the best way to pay me for it is spending your time with your prince.”

But she could get someone to talk to him.

“It’s not a debt what I have with you.”

And she left.

Leaving him with his beloved ocean and the anguish of not be able to reach it.

·

·

Emma felt almost uncomfortable during her conversation with Tinkerbell. The way she had started to say ‘ _Killian_ ’ made it seem as if she was talking about a person so loved by her that Emma thought for a second they were not talking about the same pirate.

When Ariel’s name appeared in the conversation she felt definitely out of place.

And guilty.

Thinking like that, Emma made it seem like no one could worry about Hook. But actually, she thought, Tink knew more of Killian than she could even guess, and who knows what had _happened_  between them during all that time in Neverland. She’d seen them reaching for each other after Neal’s death ―a hug, a hand on his shoulder, whispered words.

(Perhaps she felt a little bit of jealousy.)

(A little bit.)

Perhaps when she heard the words  _Jolly Roger_  and  _not here_  in the same phrase, her heart skipped a beat or two. Perhaps when Tink asked her by hers and Ariel’s word to talk to him, her feet moved a little too fast.

But when she saw him at the docks ―sunken shoulders, hand buried in black locks, hook pressed against wood, eyes looking for something they didn’t seem to hope find― none of that mattered.

Something in her chest clenched almost painfully and shoved her to him.

She sat at his side, legs hanging over the edge of the gangplank, as he realised her presence and a laughed was heard as he shook his head,  _almost_  amused.

“The little mermaid is really insistent.”

Emma slipped her finger over the wood underneath her.

“Actually, Tink has talked with me, but it was Ariel who talked to her.”

Killian smiled, a real smile.

“Ah, my lovely Tink,” he sighed, as if he was asking himself how didn’t he saw it coming. “A dangerous team, they make.”

Emma knew perhaps she should wait. Because he could stand up and walk away without looking back and she would’ve wasted a perfect occasion. But Emma had never been too patient and the fact that it was Killian who was keeping something from them didn’t reassure her at all.

“So the  _Jolly Roger_  is not here,” she tried to begin.

“No.”

Emma looked around her.

“Tink and Ariel asked me not to question you anything yet.”

“Tink and Ariel are right.”

“I won’t. Not yet.”

Killian just nodded almost without doing it. And the silence fell upon them again.

Emma watched Killian’s gaze, scouring the horizon, the orange waves ―by the sun setting and the reflection of the sky dancing over the water―, the shine of the tones covering it like a blanket.

“You look like you were expecting it to appear at any moment.”

Killian dropped his gaze to the ground and ran a hand through his hair.

“Perhaps I do.”

Emma frowned.

“What did you do?”

Killian turned and glared at her.

“’kay, right, no questions,” she raised her hands in surrender and shrugged.

_Yeah, sure._

“You did something wrong? An unnecessary fight? Something you regret now?”

_Is that why you lost it?_

Killian looked at her in the eyes.

Blue against green.

Emma couldn’t understand what boiled under all that blue’s depth.

“No. I regret nothing I did.”

The amount of sentiment that wrapped around every syllable and the stroke of his voice over the letters closed Emma’s throat, even when he looked away.

“I simply wish it would’ve been another way.”

Emma had to bit her tongue not to ask anything else.

(Literally.)

She was there to be at his side, not to make him leave.

She thought of how it must feel to lose your  _home_.

(Even if she knew how that feels ―she felt that sensation pretty often years ago― it wasn’t the same thing. It hasn’t been her home.)

Not her  _home_. Not her three-hundred-years-old- _home_.

Memories of a whole  _lifetime_. Several  _lives_ , in his case.

Emma thought of all his memories of other people that were there, in his home, memories of Liam, Milah and Neal and who knew who else. Of persons he will not see again. Everything he had from them.

 _Everything_.

He had lost  _everything_.

There were no place in the world for him to be  _happy_  as he caress the furniture, nor to find _years-forgotten_  things at the bottom of a shelf, nor to  _where_  going when you don’t want to see anyone, nor a  _smell_  that remember you of past times.

Nothing to call  _yours_.

Emma felt nausea and she tightened her fingers around the wooden edge.

“We can find it.”

Emma felt a sudden wave of conviction so strong that the fact of the low possibilities they’d have didn’t cross her mind.

Her hand closed above the part of the coat spread over the gangplank.

His hand slipped under the coat until it found the weight of hers.

Emma didn’t move her hand more than to let his slid under hers.

She turned her gaze to the same place he was looking at ―the sea.

Their breathings synchronized.

Their hands feeling each other’s warm through the leather.

Hoping for something they knew, wouldn’t come.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on [Tumblr](http://leadingrebel.tumblr.com/post/82624569868)


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